blessed are the fact-checkers

largely kicked the cable news habit but couldn't resist a little hit of breaking in realtime. don't worry, i got my comeuppance when the host told a guest "now you have weeks of content for your podcast!" back to college basketball, (barely) more morally palatable than the corporate news industry

so many. tied for first is aaliyah's are you that somebody. s/o mark gerard (see also: everclear's santa monica, d'angelo, etc) supa dupa fly is an exemplar of the form. nobody does it like hype williams. peak 90s, peak MTV youtu.be/hHcyJPTTn9w

maybe the only year-end wrap up i'll do? cheers to performative reading and performative posting popmediaprof.com/2025/12/30/b...

can't stop thinking about this part in the scorcese doc where paul schrader says of taxi driver, "when i first wrote about him [travis bickle], he was the underground man. now he's the internet man." instead of talking to nobody, all the contemporary travis bickles are gassing each other up online 📽️

yes, agree. most things that have tried (and failed) don't capture that lynchian/postmodern, wholesale rejection of the metanarrative

extended to dec 5 now you have a few more days to submit an abstract to the television area of the popular culture association

television scholars: come join us at the Popular Culture Association, one of the most fun conferences deadline to submit an abstract to the TV area (or one of the 90+ others, if you must): nov 30 see you in atlanta in the spring! pcaaca.org 📺

the amount of "news" bots churning out fake headlines grows exponentially every day on this site it should actually be illegal to create inaccurate posts about the phillies keep harrison bader's name out your trash AI mouth

@workingfamilies.org wolf packs are everywhere (or start one!) @lgbtqvictoryfund.bsky.social supports equality coalitions @emilyslist.bsky.social elects pro-choice candidates ruraldemocracyinitiative.org mobilizes progressive rural causes you can @runforsomething.net or help a motivated friend

if you're upset, angry with federal government, i see you. i invite you to spend a few mins off this site today, connect w/ a group already taking action to change things. find a local political org near you. apply for a community board. join a city committee. DM me if you need ideas; happy to chat

a cool article about television design and sense of place (in this case, tulsa) in the year's best TV show you're probably not watching— the lowdown 📺 www.forbes.com/sites/rachel...

"Politics is no longer something that is done to us; it is something that WE DO." - @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

right? when TLC said "no scrubs" everybody knew immediately what they meant. and yet "no kings" is unclear? (and also somebody write that parody please... 🎶a king is a guy who thinks he's fly/also known as a fascist🎶)

i generally keep my depraved f1 interests off this account, but i'll just say– give charles leclerc even a halfway decent car and nobody on the grid, save verstappen, holds a candle to him

once again asking people to not quote-post m*ga and fascists, including videos of their irl nonsense. they love knowing they have provoked you. don't engage. don't reply. don't repost— even to critique. stop the spread.

i'm predictable, but richard linklater has got my goddamn number. blue moon is a sad, beautiful movie i'll watch a dozen times. and happy to report that ethan hawke is just as generous and cool as you hope— as good in person as he is onscreen 📽️

i dreamed i was the host of a "what's my line"-esque game show where humans pretend to be cyborgs and a panel of cyborgs had to guess which ones were really human

after the hunt clearly endeavors to make the audience uncomfortable; viewing it as a professor adds a unique layer of discomfort. julia roberts is so damn good, and DP malik sayeed's incredible work is the most boundary-pushing thing about the whole film

"I loved every second of the regular season... [this team has] made a World Series, an NLCS, won the NL East two years in a row. That's a successful franchise. That's winning. That's giving yourself a chance. I hope they do it again next year. I hope they do it again forever." go phils

"As an autocratic dystopia continues to take shape, it’s difficult not to wonder how far this will go. Will libraries become the new speakeasies?" - @andizeisler.bsky.social #BannedBooksWeek www.salon.com/2025/10/06/t...

so busy with other work that i haven't seen as many festival films as i normally would but popped in for members' trivia last night. @filmlinc.bsky.social folks put on great events. (and also accidentally ended up at an A24 buyout at one of my local bars) love NYFF season on the west side

AI worth a pre-order

hard not to see ryder cup fans as a timely US metaphor— rich white dudes, emboldened by richer white dudes in power, making a spectacle of bad behavior. pro golf, like any global franchise, is impure all around but still easier to root for team EUR and rory to tell those douches to shut the fuck up

PTA's one battle after another has big "my partner is a Black woman" energy... multiple interpretations. sex + sexuality purposefully unsettle the audience, and harris describes some of the nuance here. ultimately agree that he makes a damn good (long, worth it) movie www.npr.org/2025/09/24/n...

Let's keep advocating for evidence-based policy, rather than policy-based "evidence"... share.inquirer.com/thiunf

thiiiis. i say this to my students all the time. aside from academic, ethical, environmental concerns (all relevant)— their brains are already better at most of the things they are trying to do with LLMs

if you are not used to feeling this kind of fear, this is for you. if like elie m and many of us, this is not your first rodeo with the violent white right, this is for you. useful tips for these times

Awful and dangerous to hear the Mayor echo the transphobic bigotry coming from the Trump administration. It's completely at odds with the values of our city and another reason why his single, disgraced term in office cannot end soon enough.

with many of my neighbors and local orgs, we've been fighting this hard. reassuring that our local electeds listened (not mayor and gov, of course). if you haven't seen firsthand, it's wild how much money has been poured into celeb endorsements, bot campaigns, courting small biz owners, bribes, etc

what a gift #phillies 🔔

still thinking about the history of sound— a beauty that you should see if you can. in an era of excess, everything about this film from the music to the pacing to the acting (especially paul mescal) is graceful restraint www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn... 📽️

“If every author in the class filed a claim, industry advocates warned, it would "financially ruin" the entire AI industry.” arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

nyc elect a mayor who doesn't actively hate nyc challenge

relatedly, you don't have to repost AI slop in order to critique AI slop

When the GOP (illegally) redraws these maps, they're going to dilute Trump+10 districts into Trump+7 or Trump+5 districts - with the right candidate in a wave election, we might be able to make those competitive. This is why I'm glad/proud @runforsomething.net built a great bench everywhere.

"As a film-going culture, we’ve lost some of our curiosity in an effort to find homogeneous and simplified answers, when in many cases simple answers aren’t even the priority for most filmmakers." — a piece i'll be sharing with my students in a couple weeks www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

i wonder what if, in the case of a questionably white supremacist shirt at a ballpark e.g., we simply did not repost it? doing the math on the gratification the wearer & his ilk get from seeing it circulate + the unease it gives non-nazis, minus the upside (zero?) = maybe we just don't #phillies

Now that Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is law, 51,000 more people will die preventable deaths each year. Republicans voted to let thousands of people die so they could give billionaires government handouts.

the rhetoric of socialism v. the practical outcomes of socialism

has anybody else ever opened tinder on a plane over the atlantic and picked up dozens of cruise ship matches? that's fun

yup. the two types of new yorkers are not born here v. moved here but rather add to v. take from here for 5 mins or 50 years— it's about seeing the city as something to be consumed, that owes you OR buying into the idea of being part of something bigger, contributing. anti-social vs pro-social

i heard that cinema is dead and yet i sat with 200+ people in a packed theater on a tuesday afternoon to screen a fifty year old movie long live film, and RIP to a legend @filmlinc.bsky.social

queer studies folks & pop culture scholars/practitioners: 3 days left to submit to MAPACA conference in LGBTQ+ studies (or one of our ~50 other subject areas) and i'm biased but it's in the best place this year— philly! submit by july 31 and join us in november mapaca.net/areas/lesbia...

kruk, at yankee stadium: i'm not sure we need the eagles chants right now also me at every phillies game ever. i mean, go birds but yeah... go phils

in honour of international nonbinary people's day, a gift link to @farfarraway.bsky.social's piece about the public universal friend share.inquirer.com/cYmcda

i never feel more empathy for the human race than when watching someone have a public breakdown on the phone in nyc

also paused season 4 briefly to go back and rewatch s2 e7 forks— one of the best standalone episodes of television period it is impossible to not be invested anytime ebon moss-bachrach is onscreen

in bed with a cold over the long weekend; ended up reading kristen kish's memoir *and* watching the bear season 4. AMA about cooking or acting about cooking

here's to you, bodega guys who stock the cooler with frozen bottles of water. fucking clutch on three-digit days 🫡